Ex-inmates: Blago's in for a jolt

The former Illinois governor is expected on Thursday to arrive at Englewood, a low-security facility in Littleton, Colo., located 15 miles southwest of Denver, to begin serving his 14-year sentence for corruption. Never one to shy away from the media spotlight, Blagojevich plans to make a final public statement in front of the cameras on Wednesday, just hours before he must leave behind his wife, Patti, and two young daughters, Amy, 15, and Anne, 8.

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A trip to the big house would be humbling for anyone, but it is a particularly degrading ordeal for a man who until a short while ago dreamed of being president. To find out what Blagojevich can expect inside, POLITICO talked with ex-pols who served time behind bars about how best the disgraced 55-year-old Chicago native can survive prison.

And nothing will be more difficult than the first day, they said.

Jim Laski — a fellow Chicagoan and ex-city clerk who was known during his one-year sentence as number 18413-424 — recalled his first day as “dehumanizing.” For Blagojevich, he said, it might be worse.

“Someone like Blagojevich who’s been driven around his whole life, he’s had everybody do everything for him, now he’s not Rod Blagojevich anymore,” Laski, who was convicted of corruption and served time at a minimum-security prison in Morgantown, W.Va., told POLITICO. “He’s just a number.”

When the sun set on his first day, Laski remembered thinking, “How do I get through this?”

“The first night there, you go to bed and it is noisy as all heck. It’s prison!” Laski said. “You hear people talking who have been there a while, and you’re missing your family, your kids, your wife, and these guys are joking around and it’s prison.”

The first several days are especially “traumatizing” and likely to be Blagojevich’s “low point,” said former Ohio congressman and ex-con Bob Ney. “Everything’s taken away from you.”

At Englewood, the only personal item Blagojevich will be allowed to keep in his possession is a plain wedding band.

Ney, who pled guilty to federal corruption charges related to the Jack Abramoff scandal and did a 17-month sentence at Morgantown, said of Blagojevich, “He’s not a street guy. The first three days you’ve got to start talking to people. You’ll make friends. I made some great friends in prison.”

For an ex-governor like Blagojevich, who for years enjoyed a glamorous lifestyle of fine dining, chauffeurs and dedicated staffers, prison will shock him to his core and he will quickly learn there is no room for a sense of entitlement on the inside.

“Check your ego and personality on the way in and pick them up on the way out,” said Scott Fawell, the ex-chief of staff to former Illinois Gov. George Ryan who served most of his more than four years at a federal prison camp in Sioux Falls, S.D. “He’s got to get away from what he was.”